Friday, July 5, 2024
Back to Kalispell
We decided to make today a shopping day so we drove into Kalispell to Kohl’s and Costco. Walking through those two stores (and we ended up walking both stores entirely) exhausted us, and made my knee hurt. We didn’t find everything we were shopping for and I had brought a small grocery list with me, but we were just done. Joe has become less picky with his diet Cokes -- where we used to always have to find a Circle K and we would go in to get them. Now he uses the McDonald’s drive-through. Times are a changing. They’re not as big, they cost more and they’re not in Styrofoam cups, but it’s all a matter of convenience.
We had a bit of bad luck today. When Joe brought the awning in this morning, something popped so he knew when we got back from our shopping trip that he was going to have to get the ladder down and take a look. I hate to see him on the ladder, and I held it but that was my only assistance.
A pin on the top rail of the awning had detached, and the awning wouldn’t go all the way in. He worked on it for an hour or so while I held the ladder, but he couldn’t get enough force to get the pen back in.
But we found out how you meet your neighbors in an RV park. One guy (Ed) stopped by and said hi and left, but then he came back a little bit later and offered to help. Before that, a guy stopped by in a car (and he looked older than us) and offered to help but at that point, Joe didn’t know what help he needed. But Ed came back and actually did help, he brought over a bigger set of channel locks and got up on the ladder to try to force the pin back in place, but neither he nor Joe were successful. The guy from the camper in front of us -- a Tiffin -- walked over to see what was going on. His wife said she knew when she told him we had all the tools out that he wouldn’t be able to keep from coming over. The Tiffan guy was 84 and he lives in Surprise. Arizona. He didn’t help but he stayed and chatted with Joe. Joe and Ed reached the decision that we had to call for a mobile service. They were not able to fix it, so we did that but the Tiffan guy stayed and visited until the service guy showed up.
The mobile service guy, Craig, said he could be here in a couple of hours, but he actually showed up about 45 minutes later. He worked for a little over an hour. He had to leave to go get parts but he has us ready to travel again. His show-up fee was $110 and the total charge was just $240. It could have been worse.
Ed came back over later to find out what the outcome was. He is from California, or "Taxafornia" as he called it. And he and Joe discussed RVs for a while. And now they are exchanging phone numbers so I guess he has a new friend.
That's it for today. No plans at this time for tomorrow, but it's our last day here in this area. We are heading toward to Missoula on Sunday.
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